Wow.

That Lancair dropped ten thousand feet in the space of a minute and a half,
according to radar returns.

That's a descent of over 6000fpm, which is consistent with the downburst of
a potent thuderstorm.

We can only speculate what happened, but it seems likely that the pilot
tangled with a thunderstorm and possibly got swept down in a microburst.

Why he would enter a Level 6 storm? That is the question. Surely ATC must
have given him warning from their scopes.

Would he have acted differently with a radar display in the airplane? I
would say probably--seeing in living color the kind of activity you are
flying into is more persuasive than hearing about it in your headset.

Gordon Arnaut.
Ontario, Canada.




"Veeber" wrote in message
news:QsTwc.11813$HG.11601@attbi_s53...
All you people who feel you have to say something on every topic no matter
how little you really know about it make me sick!

Most of you have never even seen the inside of a Lancair, and your
speculations are just repeats of stuff that has been floating around on
the
net for a long time.

This particular accident, was weather-related, not Lancair-related. Read
the NTSB preliminary.

Here is a quote from the NTSB:
"Aircraft radar track data was obtained from the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA), Grand Rapids Approach Control facility. The track
data
was plotted on a weather radar chart that depicted areas of precipitation
and their corresponding intensities. The plotted data showed N707SH
traveling into an area of level six precipitation prior to a rapid loss of
altitude. The aircraft entered the region of level six radar returns at
12,000 feet and the last radar return was at 2,000 feet approximately
1-1/2
minutes later."

Level 6 is the highest classification of precipitation, described as
"extreme, more than 5" per hour.

http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief.asp?e...04X00740&key=1